Covering all the bases with whatever's bouncing around in my head today!

Not Who You Think It Is

It’s been almost two weeks since my last entry, and there just really hasn’t been much going on to motivate me to blog. This is a good thing, I suppose, because it means there isn’t any controversy in the Phils’ camp at the moment, and no injuries to worry about (yet).

So today I was idly browsing through a list of the all-time Phillies roster, and was struck by some of the names that made me do a double-take, thinking to myself “Huh, I didn’t know he was a Phillie”.

And that’s because they weren’t, at least not the person I first thought of.

Take, for example, Ethan Allen.

Most of us will probably think of the furniture company. Ethan Allen the furniture company was not founded by anyone named Ethan Allen, though. It was started by two New Yorkers who bought an old furniture factory in Vermont, and named it after an actual Ethan Allen.

That would be Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero, who was from Vermont, and led the Green Mountain Boys in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga.

Ethan Allen the baseball player was not from Vermont, but rather hailed from Ohio. This Ethan Allen was an outfielder for six different major league teams during his 13-year big-league career, including a stint with the Phillies from 1934-36.

Over the course of his Phillies career, he batted .316, and led the league in doubles with 42 in 1934. His time as a Phillie came to an end in 1936, when he was part of a trade with the Cubs that brought future Hall-of-Famer Chuck Klein to the Phillies.

Next up: Buster Brown – shoe maven, bluesman, or ballplayer?

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2 Comments

I love posts like this of old players. I learned something! Thanks Sue! I also rattled my brain what to post about. i am just excited that tomorrow morning we leave to the Ranch to watch our boys in Blue. The weather does not look good to go on the road but God willing, we will arrive safely.
Emmahttp://crzblue.mlblogs.com

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